Hawt.

Since I'm a baker, I get to deal with ovens and a proofbox (which doesn't give off heat, but a nice brief sauna when you open the door). Luckily I don't have to work with a fryer, which is the worst. You kind of have to lean into it to flip the donuts and get them in and out, and you have to watch out if you're sweating and it falls into the fryer (I know that's gross, but it happens, probably very often during the summer).

When I was a teenager working for my dad, I worked by myself overnight on the weekends, and despite the ginormous exhaust fan over the oven, it was boiling in that place. A lot of times I would just wear sneakers, shorts and an apron. If you've seen me lately, you're probably throwing up a little in your mouth picturing that (if you've gone that far), but fear not, I was pretty svelte in high school. That's when the sweaty donuts happened.

The only relief from this was either sitting in the walk-in freezer for a few minutes (which didn't really help in the long run, it just gave me a chill because it froze my sweat), or I put on the cold water and used the sink sprayer to spray down my head. I did the water spraying more often, and that's how we get the phrase "go soak your head." Now you know the REST of the story!

At my current job, they added on to the original building and put the bakery in the new part, back in 2001. We've had some problems with air flow in there since then. We have an exhaust fan over the ovens, but it is on the roof, above the hood (we could see the one in my dad's bakery). We found out 2 years ago that it was broken. We could hear it power on, but it wasn't turning. It broke again early this summer, and they said it would be fixed permanently this time. I listen closely when I turn it on now, just in case it sounds different.

The other problem is air conditioning. I only worked at one place where air conditioning was effective, and that was at Rutgers. Other places had it, but it was instantly negated by ovens, and at Aramark, by the 4 giant open steam kettles that they made soups and sauces in. When I first started at Byler's (where I am now), if you walked from the bakery into the store proper, you could feel the temperature drop about 20 degrees. About 4 years ago they put an AC unit in our back room, which was only good in the back room and the warehouse behind that. We put a giant fan in the back room to blow the cold air into the bakery, but it didn't really help. There was a lot of head soaking going on in those years.

There is a thermostat, an air intake, and diffusers in the ceiling of the bakery. We found out last year that the hoses for this AC were screwed up, which is why we weren't getting any air. They fixed that, and lo and behold, we had AC in the bakery! After 6 and 1/2 years! But like I said, it does get negated by the ovens, but it's much more bearable.

Until we got our new convection oven, and I had to move stuff around to make it fit. My back is now to the ovens, and it gets pretty hot. You can see the salt stains in my shirt at the end of the day. Last week, I moved the benches a little further away from the ovens, because we had the space on the other side. Thankfully, it made a big difference.

Thanks for making it to the end of today's disgusting topic. Tomorrow, all about pus!

MORAL: Don't eat donuts in the summer.